As we move into the twenty-first century, it is not difficult
to detect the kind of future which most people in Britain would like to
have. They want peace and prosperity. They put a premium on well run public
services, combined with levels of taxation which they regard as reasonable.
They want efficient and responsive government. They would like to live
in a society which is reasonably at ease with itself. They value highly
their ability to live their lives the way they want, while knowing that
if they are treated unfairly the legal and regulatory system will come
to their aid. Are such views of the future widely shared within the leadership
of the European Union? Current opinion polls, showing that 52% of those
voting in a referendum on membership would leave the EU altogether if
given a chance to do so, suggest that most people in Britain do not think
they are. This Bulletin looks at a number of familiar ways in which EU
membership is doing ongoing damage to Britain and to our preferred ways
of organising our affairs and living our lives.

2. What kind of agricultural
policy do we want?

Nearly 50% of the EU budget is still spent on the Common
Agricultural Policy, despite all efforts to curb its massive cost. The
result of keeping food prices artificially far higher than they need to
be is that the average family of four people has to pay about £20
a week - £1,000 per year - more for food than is necessary. Meanwhile
the "barley barons" rake in subsidies which they do not need
while, even before the tragedy of foot and mouth disease, the average
farmer was in desperate financial straits. Part of the reason for this
is that, as in so many other ways to do with the EU, farming does much
worse out of the CAP in this country than it does in other Member States.
Irish farmers receive 70% more per head in subsidies than their British
equivalents, for example, while the share of CAP funds going to Britain
has steadily fallen. In 1999, it was only £2.2bn out of the total
of £27.5bn which the EU spent on agriculture. It is also the case
that the rapid spread of foot and mouth was at least partly caused by
massive animal movements flowing from EU policies. These resulted from
a combination of sheep dealers moving animals around the country to fill
EU quotas, many of them fraudulent, and the closure of large numbers of
local abattoirs unable to afford to comply with endless EU directives
and regulations.

3. What do most people
think of the current controversy over weights and measures?

The recent court case in Sunderland, where Steve Thoburn
was prosecuted for selling bananas in pounds and ounces rather than in
kilograms, highlights a very different example where EU involvement grates
against what most people believe is reasonable. There is, of course, much
to be said for the metric measuring system, but its superiority is not
overwhelming. It is hardly used in the USA, the worlds most powerful
economy. The issue is not, however, whether one way of measuring weights
and measures is better than another. It is whether, if people prefer to
use one with which they are familiar, and which they prefer, they should
be prohibited from doing so. It is whether the state - in this case the
EU - should prescribe the way citizens interact with each other. It is
also about whether the rule of Brussels or Westminster should prevail.

4. What conclusions
should we draw about the treatment of EU whistle blowers?

Bernard Connolly was for a considerable number of years
a senior bureaucrat in the EU Commission, intimately involved with the
development of EU monetary and financial policies and institutions. In
1995 he published a book, The Rotten Heart of Europe, in which
he exposed the politicking and the damage done by the inner workings of
the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the system which locked the EU currencies
together between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. For his pains in
blowing the whistle, he was sacked from the Commission. Recently, his
claim for wrongful dismissal was turned down by the EU Court in Luxembourg.
The judgement implied that the kind of criticism which Bernard Connolly
had produced was close to being equivalent to blasphemy. It was not claimed
that what he had said was untrue - only that it was highly critical of
the European project. Is this the kind of standard we really want to see
applied in this country to the administration of justice, as traditional
safeguards such as habeas corpus, the presumption of innocence
and trial by jury are to be replaced by the continental inquisitorial
system?

5. What do we make
of proposals for the European Rapid Reaction Force?

At present, there is a wide measure of co-operation between
the British armed forces and those of other EU Member States. This is
arranged through the Atlantic Alliance and NATO. If there is to be a European
state, however, it is argued that it will need to have its own armed forces,
just as it already has its own currency, passport, flag and anthem. Hence
the proposal for the European Rapid Reaction Force, which the Commission
President, Romano Prodi, himself described as being nothing if not a European
army in embryo. Indeed, the command and reporting structure of the new
organisation is to be independent of NATO, which merely has to be kept
informed of what the Rapid Reaction Force is doing. The issue here is
whether these proposals have anything realistic to do with improving our
security, or whether they are primarily designed to reinforce the development
of a European superstate, whether or not they destabilise NATO, and add
to the risk of another arms race.

6. Can we be sure
that referendums and elections will be fairly fought in future?

If the citizens of Britain are to be in a position to
make their views felt effectively on these and other issues, a prime requirement
is that elections - and referendums if they are to take place - are held
on as level a playing field as possible. It is because of rising suspicions
that money has played too large a part in influencing the public in the
run up to recent elections that the Neill Committee has recommended curbs
on such expenditure, including a bar on foreign money, most of which the
government has accepted. There is, however, one glaring exception - the
EU. If there is a referendum on the Single Currency, any EU based company
will be able to spend money on trying to persuade the electorate to decide
which way to vote. Since it is the rich multinational companies that favour
the euro, it is not difficult to see what the impact of this loophole
is likely to be. Is this fair?

7. What is the impact
of the cost of EU membership on the British economy?

If the British people want high quality public services
combined with reasonable levels of taxation, it is hard to argue that
EU membership is a help. In 1998 alone, Britain paid into the EU a total
of £12.5bn. We received back £6.8bn, leaving us £5.7bn
worse off. The ratio between the proportion of the EU budget we fund and
the amount we receive in return is exceptionally unfavourable. We pay
in 13.4% and get 8% back, compared to, for example, Eire, where the average
standard of living is now higher than it is in the UK, which contributes
1.3% and gets 4% back. In other words, Ireland, with a population of 3.5m
receives nearly half as much in remittances from the EU as the UK with
a population of 59m. No wonder a large majority of people in Britain think
that we are being fleeced by the EU, and treated exceedingly unfairly.

8. Are there other
effects which EU membership has on government finances?

Not only does the financing regime in the EU mean that
we pay in far too much in relation to what we receive back, but the government
is also adversely affected in other ways. The Chancellor of the Exchequer
was recently rebuked by the EU Commission for planning to increase public
expenditure, despite the healthy state of British public sector finances.
Perhaps the biggest influence from the EU, however, has been on a different
aspect of the public finances, which is on the proportion of the national
income which the government is allowed to borrow, which has been set by
the EU at the entirely arbitrary figure of 3%. This ceiling has put pressure
on all governments in the EU to get borrowing carried out not by the government
but by private sector organisations, even if it is to finance badly needed
public investment expenditure, such as building hospitals and schools,
or bringing the London underground system up to a reasonable standard.
Since the government can always borrow at cheaper rates of interest than
private companies, and it does not have to make a profit, it is hardly
surprising that the long term cost of offloading public investment on
to the private sector is going to be expensive. Why, in addition, should
we not have public accountability for running public services such as
the underground or air traffic control?

9. Where do these
considerations leave the average voter?

Looking forward to the future, it is hardly surprising
therefore, that average voters in Britain have a highly sceptical view
of the EU, and wonder why they should have to put up with much of what
it does. They do not believe that major parts of the EU apparatus, such
as the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy have
been good either for Britain or our farmers and fishermen. They thoroughly
dislike the endless interference from Brussels with the way we run our
affairs. They do not believe that the standards of efficiency and fairness
in the way the EU institutions operate match up to those which have prevailed
generally in public life in Britain for a long time. They think - surely
rightly - that there is a massive democratic deficit in the EU, with far
too much power wielded by unaccountable functionaries, and much too little
by politicians whom the ballot box can remove if they are incompetent,
or if they feather their own nests. They do not want a European army and
the destabilisation which this is likely to bring in train. They think
that we have had a raw deal out of the EU budget, and that this is unlikely
to change. More and more are coming to understand that one of the major
reasons why so much of our public sector infrastructure is in such bad
shape is because of EU rules about borrowing which make no sense. It appears,
nevertheless, that the government - or at least some members of it - still
think that shortly after the general election they can hold a referendum
and persuade the British people to vote in favour of joining the euro.
If the electorate has so many other reasons for being highly sceptical
about the EU, however, is it really realistic to believe that it will
vote in favour of taking the biggest single step it could towards locking
ourselves into the EU superstate structure - supposedly irrevocably?